Bookwyrm
by Laryna6
Summary: Dante visits his old home and remembers his family. Vergil always was the one who was more like Sparda.


Disclaimer: Don't own Devil May Cry. Do own copies of the Sound DVDs, which I highly recommend buying. They rock.

NaNoWriMo completed! I'm actually writing this on Nov. 30, right after completing it. It's been wow. My novel seriously needs editing. And for the other half to be written. But still, wow.

I'm rather sad it's over. So I've been writing more today.

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The library was spotless, even though no one had been in it for twenty years except Dante, and he never stayed any longer than he could help. Cleaning it would have been over his dead body.

Well, Vergil might have snuck in once or twice during those years they had both thought the other dead. They had both been trying to keep Mundus' minions from finding out the sons of Sparda had survived until they were old enough to protect themselves: just a side effect neither had known the other had escaped

Dante hadn't known Vergil was alive until it had been too late.

Dante had wanted to carry on his mother's legacy after she had died to save him, and Vergil…

Vergil had wanted Sparda's power. It wasn't until after it was all over Dante had realized that he'd wanted it in order to carry out their father's legacy.

Without power you can't protect anything. Gutsy, gutsy Vergil. Tricking Arkham into thinking he wanted the demon world to conquer humanity in order to gain the power to save it.

"You would be proud of him, father," Dante said to the empty room and immediately felt like an idiot for saying it.

When he had triggered with the Sparda, felt its power surge through his body, he had felt… demons lived on in devil arms, and Sparda's spell should have collapsed with his death.

Still stupid to say it here, though. The Sparda was with Trish, and the Amulet. His father's sword and his mother's Amulet. Together now, together again.

His father.

Vergil had always wanted to be like him. Like the father they only knew from Mother's stories and photographs and the home he had left behind.

The father that had disappeared when they were too young to remember him. The father who had left their mother to raise them alone. To defend them against all the enemies they inherited from him.

The devil who made his mother cry.

Oh yes, he had seen her, that time when he was five. She had told him about a book his namesake had written and he had found in here, in this library, and read it with Vergil and they had went to tell her it was so cool!

She had smiled, and hugged him, and told him she was so proud, he and Vergil were just like their father, so smart like him, loved books like him… that he would have been so proud of them!

Vergil had always preened, but Dante had looked and there was something… wrong. Wrong about that smile.

And then she made an excuse and left and one time Dante had followed her to her room and peeked through the door and seen her cry. Seen her sob out the name of the one who had abandoned her, and if father had been there he would have hit him.

He was angry at Vergil, always trying to be like father, always reminding her. Vergil had said he was jealous and they had fought… Vergil had been just as jealous as him, though.

Dante had been babied, he knew it now. He didn't work as hard as Vergil and so he was always behind and Eva was always helping him catch up.

And then she had died, in yet another attack by his father's enemies.

His father's sword hadn't been worth watching Vergil fall. Not worth all that _shit. _

But it had been. Vergil had been right. The sword was the key to defeating Mundus.

His big brother, always better than him. Good enough to resist Mundus' control for long enough to give him the other half of the Amulet.

It was dark here, the only lights the chandeliers he had turned on with the switch at the door. No need for the reading lamps that mother had always made them turn on. Better for their eyes, even though they could see in the dark.

The shelves stretched away into the darkness.

Dante wondered how many centuries he would need to read them all.

Why was he standing around? He was just here to drop some books off, the ones he'd found on Mallet about the nature of the castle and what had happened there in the past. Someone might need the information someday, and what safer place for them than the Dark Knight's castle?

He had come here right after the time he lost Vergil, to stash a few spell books he had grabbed from the library in Temen ni Gru and Lady's father's books, the ones that hadn't burned when she had tried to destroy them.

And now he had seen Vergil again. Still alive. And here he was again.

It was cool here, and the tread of his boots echoed as he looked for where the library's organization said the books should go. He knew it by heart by now. So many times everything he'd learned hadn't been enough, so many times he had come here and his father's library had held the answer.

He had only come here as a last resort, and the books would stay in his shop until the next time.

He hadn't wanted to be beholden to his father.

It was calm here, and the shadows seemed tinted blue, and titles lined the shelves inviting him to browse. The collection ranged from ancient spells to ancient poetry, things the rest of the world had lost when Alexandria burned. Modern literature and modern psychology. The Divine Comedy, Paradise Regained…

Everything that attempted to describe humans to humans and demons to humans.

Had he found they described humans to a devil?

Some had said (and he had believed) his father had been cold-hearted as Vergil had seemed on the tower. A devil aping humanity but with none of the heart. A snake in sheepdog's clothing.

Mother would never have married someone like that. So him tricking her was another thing to add to his list of crimes.

"She told me you were a man who fought for the weak," he told the strangely comforting silence here what he had told Trish.

He shifted the books on either side away and put the ones he had found in the various spots they belonged. And kept walking.

So much empty space. There… there was one thing published after 1975.

Mother had bought books for him and placed them here. She had never given up on him. Always believed that someday… she would have gone after the sword herself, Dante realized now. Tried to save him herself, knowing she wouldn't have stood a chance.

But she had had his children to look after.

And she hadn't stood a chance. But she had done it anyway. They had survived. They still survived, unless Mundus had wised up and killed Vergil.

He wouldn't. He was a fool, and the thought of torturing the one son of Sparda he had, the one enemy he had defeated (but not completely) would be too tempting.

Vergil was the one he would get back no matter what. Vergil belonged in the human world, he belonged here.

Cool and dry and dark and quiet and secret. A serpent's lair. A dragon's, a devil's.

He had always felt safe here, even though he'd rejected it. His father's books protecting him even after he had gone.

So many empty shelves. So many things they were missing. The world was changing so much… Mother would love how far equal rights had come, Father would…

There was a desk here, made of oak and clearly an antique. The top contained crisp paper, still white and blank, and a selection of pens. And a photograph of Sparda, Eva, and in Eva's arms two tiny pale babes.

And, after Dante had left and the echoes of his footsteps had died away, anyone who had come (but no one came, besides Dante… for now) would have found a DVD box set of the three Lord of the Rings movies.


End file.
